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Monday, August 20, 2012

Movie Musings: TOWER HEIST

Despite starring two actors who’ve made their Hollywood bones as being bankable comedy stars and a marketing push that purports to show TOWER HEIST as being another predictable knee slapper, it was quite the surprise to me find that I’d wandered into a screening of a big budget blockbuster with the trapping of a social conscience.

TOWER HEIST is actually intended to be a ‘serious’ film about us little folk and the fallout from the 2008 financial meltdown. Unfortunately the film’s stunt casting and overly elaborate heist premise undercuts its own passing callout to social relevance.

“Ha, ha. It’s clever to make jokes about poverty and homelessness because Zoolander and Axel Foley are funny.”

The end result is a movie that’s never close to being the comedy tour-de-force you expected to be watching and doesn’t manage to be the cunning heist film it clearly wants to be. Don’t get me wrong, HEIST isn’t a bad film, it’s just the its underlying plot and thematic thrusts are so clearly at odds with the window dressing used to lure the audience in.